FIFE - a cross platform isometric game engine

[The Lord Of The Flames]

Sure. So long as a binary is provided (my XCode recently broke).

 

[inwoker]

And the more people are able to create their games the better.

The more Oblivion-like games developed the more chance of good Oblivion-like game.

 

[mvBarracuda]

So here we go! FIFE binaries for Intel Macs:
http://members.fifengine.de/donbachi/Re ... 2007.2.zip

Needed dependencies:
http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?titl ... #Framework

How to run:
Move into the <FIFE> folder and run: python techdemo.py

Feedback would be really appreciated if these binaries work for you!

 

[The Lord Of The Flames]

Didn't work:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/____/Desktop/FIFE_2007.2/techdemo.py", line 25, in <module>
    import fife, fifelog
  File "engine/swigwrappers/python/fife.py", line 7, in <module>
    import _fife
ImportError: dlopen(engine/swigwrappers/python/_fife.so, 2): Library not loaded: @executable_path/../Frameworks/SDL_image.framework/Versions/A/SDL_image
  Referenced from: engine/swigwrappers/python/_fife.so
  Reason: image not found

Image? What Inage? There are no images in /Frameworks (and there shouldn't be).
Changing
Frameworks/SDL_image.framework/Versions/A/SDL_image
to
Frameworks/SDL.framework/Versions/A/SDL
would fix the problem (at least i suspect so) since that is the right path.

 

[mvBarracuda]

You'll need to install SDL_image to run FIFE:
http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_image/

 

[The Lord Of The Flames]

Now is not my time of the day.
Definitiv to many dependencies and you should update your wiki with all the download links.
I'll try it again tomorrow, or some time.

 

[mvBarracuda]

http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_imag ... -1.2.5.dmg

See:
http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?titl ... pile_guide

 

[mvBarracuda]

The FIFE project is trying to fill various positions on the team with fresh blood. Feel free to take a look at the the detailed help wanted thread we posted at gamedev.net recently:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums ... _id=471055

 

[mvBarracuda]

No fancy new screenshots this time but we updated our compile SDK for Windows systems. You'll need the new SDK to build the latest SVN revisions of FIFE on Win32. Grab the new SDK here:
FIFE Win32 compile SDK sfx 7zip version
FIFE Win32 compile SDK zip version

 

[mvBarracuda]

It's update time!

It was pretty quiet in the last weeks. One reason were the number of university tasks but another factor was my personal lazyness and lethargy caused by the holiday period. Now FIFE is back with yet another news update

Here is a nifty new screenshot of the currently work in progress editor tool:


Furthermore our latest blog post covers the latest issues we encountered but also progress reports from the audio module, editor development and pather front.

You can check out the whole news update at the FIFE developer blog:
Time for heroes - yet another FIFE blog update

Last but not least: we're of course still trying to recruit new developers for the project Don't be shy and visit us at our developer IRC channel.

 

[cardtrick]

Sweet!

It's really nice to see that some progress has been made on the editor. I hope you don't think that because there are few recent posts in this thread, people are uninterested -- it's just that you are very thorough about updating us and most questions have already been answered at some point. I know that many people follow the work you guys do with interest. Keep it up!

 

[almondblight]

Yeah, keep up the good work!

 

[Keldorn]

Isometric GLORY !




AIYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Higher Game]

That editor looks nice.

 

[mvBarracuda]

Sweet!

It's really nice to see that some progress has been made on the editor. I hope you don't think that because there are few recent posts in this thread, people are uninterested -- it's just that you are very thorough about updating us and most questions have already been answered at some point. I know that many people follow the work you guys do with interest. Keep it up!

Thanks for the support cardtrick The last weeks the project was going pretty slow but it's great to see that people still have faith in us. That helps us to go on.

 

[elander_]

Great stuff. The editor reminds me of the Fallout editor which is a bonus for people who already did some quests with it.

 

[mvBarracuda]

The Fallout editor is surely no usuability wonder :-/

On the other side: nobody on the team had experience in creating such a GUI-heavy application. Therefore we can hopefully improve the editor with the collected experience over the releases as a we're pretty sure that our first attempt to create such a tool isn't the last one.

 

[mvBarracuda]

For the ones who don't follow the NMA modding forums regularly: Fallout modder Continuum created a nifty hibernation tube graphics pack

Continuum was so kind to send me all these graphics as PNGs and I imported them into FIFE. I think it really looks awesome but judge yourself:

 

[Kingston]

That is pretty damn cool.

 

[elander_]

Amamzing. Please continue. I want to be able to do some games with this stuff for fun.

 

[mvBarracuda]

It's update time again three weeks have passed since our last official blog update and we're glad that we can report to have made several steps forward in this time.

To just summarize the most important points:
- We decided to revive the island_demo concept from the 2007.1 release and ship a island_demo like game with future FIFE releases
- View code changes to improve performance and resolve z-order issues
- Floating text renderer support for map instances
- VFS improvements for editor tool
- Vastly improved pychan extension
- FIFE documentation server with fresh doxygen, epydoc documentation generated on a daily basis; live IRC logs for developers
- Tweaked FIFE forums design
- Fresh blood on the team: two new programmers, one additional project manager
- New precompiled Win32 SVN snapshot available

Feel free to give the whole detailed blog update a read here:
http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/en ... 1/28/17.22

In case you're just interested in fancy screenshots we got something for you as well. Here is a list of all new screenshots that are shown in the update:
Floating text support:


Continuum graphics pack: 45° rotation:


Continuum graphics pack: 135° rotation:


Continuum graphics pack: 225° rotation:


Continuum graphics pack: 315° rotation:


Continuum graphics pack: playing around with rotation, tilt and zoom parameters:


Last but not least: here is the download link for the mentioned new SVN snapshot for Win32:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/F ... _win32.exe

 

[mvBarracuda]

We've done it again! We proudly present the FIFE 2008.0 release

Download:
* Source package (FreeBSD, Linux, Macintosh)
* Win32 binaries

Screenshot of the new editor tool:


Youtube promotion trailer:
FIFE 2008.0 promo video

Theme of this release:
For the 2008.0 release we decided to pick up the island_demo concept again. Right: again. We already used this concept for the 2007.1 release but we put it on ice as we worked together with the Zero-Projekt developers on a different example game for the 2007.2 release. The cooperation didn't work out as planned for either side and so both teams stick to their own projects again now.

After the cooperation has ended we considered all possible options and finally decided to flesh out the old island_demo concept and base our future example game upon it. Although we were able to finish the initial planning work for the new island_demo game some days ago, there is almost none of the new planned content in place yet. On the other side the engine itself and the editor tool that ships with it now made _huge_ steps forward since the last release about 4 months ago. Therefore we decided to release the current status as stable release although it offers not many new aspects on the content side and the content that is in place is very likely to change with the 2008.1 release.

The milestone itself seems to be a very important step into the right direction. You can build your own maps now with the help of the editor tool. Furthermore a basic application structure is in place that should give you an idea how can create your own FIFE-based game. We'll surely adjust the structure of the island_demo client over the next months but this release is stable enough to start working on your game now.

This release is surely not the beginning of the end of the road for us, but it's the end of beginning for the FIFE development team. Enjoy it as we do

Important changes since the 2007.2 release:
* New audio module with support for some more advanced audio features.
* Optimized view code to improve the performance and resolve map instance z-order issues.
* Switched back to island_demo concept; this will be the example game that ships with future FIFE releases as well.
* Ability to save maps
* Routing pathfinding (previous release only had linear pather)
* Pluggable rendering system with several new plugins included.
* New editor tool, which can be used to layout maps
* XML-format improvements: stack position, z-position, camera definitions, animation x/y offsets
* Vastly improved pychan extension; XML based GUI definitions
* Quadtree adjustments
* Ability to define own settings formats and interpret them from scripts
* Ability to attach cameras to instances (so that they are tracked while they move)
* Separate x/y scaling for cellgrids, allows more flexible geometry definitions (e.g. rectangle)
* Basic mouse map instance picking.
* Improved engine-script exception reporting
* Mouse cursors can be changed from scripts

Few non-code related changes:
* Rough task list for the whole island demo has now been created
* Vastly improved documentation with nightly updates for engine core & scripts
* Lots of new content gathered and created for island demo e.g. agent definitions, clouds graphics, music...

Read the full release announcement at the FIFE developer blog.

 

[Keldorn]

Now maybe some Modders or Indies can start making the ultimate epic CRPG.

 

[mvBarracuda]

Hopefully Would be great to see that FIFE gets slowly adopted by the community.

 

[Wilco]

OT questions: How difficult is it exactly to make character animations for games like Fallout, BG, Planescape: Torment etc? I heard 3D heads used clay animation or something like that; is the same technique applied to the character gifs? Also, how is consistency kept through the animation cycle (assuming the animation is hand drawn)?